Mandatory First Year Academic Success Program

The Whittier Law School Academic Success Program includes a first-year academic year component consisting of seminars and small group sessions in conjunction with a first year course, taught by full time Academic Support Professors.

The primary purpose of the Academic Success Program is to assist students in mastering the skills necessary to succeed in law school. We use the substantive law of Torts as a tool for teaching students how to read and analyze cases, how to brief cases, how to take notes, and organize their notes and briefs, how to outline, how to prepare for exams, how to analyze exam questions (including spotting issues), and, finally, how to write good exam answers.

In the first semester, students will learn strategies for :

Class Preparation Skills
Case Briefing and Note Taking
Transforming Notes
Outlining and Preparing for Midterm Exams
Internalizing Notes and Exam Taking Skills
Time Management and Resource Alloction
Methods of Legal Analysis
Final Exam Techniques
Multiple Choice Strategies

The second semester focuses exclusively on exam writing in the first-year substantive courses.

Exam Writing Workshops

In the first semester of ASP students participate in an exam-taking workshop with some instruction in multiple choice strategies. In the second semester, workshops addressing essay writing and multiple choice strategies in Contracts, Torts, and Criminal Law are given. All of the workshops are videotaped and are placed on reserve for students to check-out overnight.

If you have any questions about any aspect of the Academic Success Program, please feel free to call or stop by, or e-mail me at mmainero@law.whittier.edu. I would be delighted to assist you in any way I can.

Professor Mario Mainero
Associate Dean, Student and Graduate Academic Support